ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Humans plan for the near future to walk economically on uneven terrain.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Altered walking gaze behavior after stroke: more than meets the eye.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Visual control of walking using terrain reconstructions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A low-cost markerless motion capture system to automate functional gait assessment: Feasibility study.PloS one · 2026Article
- Quantifying Changes in Balance, Gait, Fall Risk, and Sensory Reweighting in Older Adults Following Multi-Session Electrical Vestibular Stimulation Therapy.Medical devices (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Article
- Natural visually guided behavior.Brain research · 2025Article
- Computational elements of natural vision.Journal of vision · 2025Review
- Humans self-organise balance control strategies on a dynamic platform.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Approaches to understanding natural behavior.Journal of vision · 2025Review
- Applying bilateral mastoid vibration changes the margin of stability in the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions while walking on different inclines.European journal of medical research · 2025Article
- Behavioural energetics in human locomotion: how energy use influences how we move.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Review
- Stochastic galvanic vestibular stimulation improves kinetic performance in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis during obstacle negotiation.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Associations between declines in uneven terrain walking speed and visuospatial working memory in older adults.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- How vision shapes the paths we choose.eLife · 2024Article
- Human walking biomechanics on sand substrates of varying foot sinking depth.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Human navigation strategies and their errors result from dynamic interactions of spatial uncertainties.Nature communications · 2024Article
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- Continuous evaluation of cost-to-go for flexible reaching control and online decisions.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Humans experience small fluctuations in their gait when walking on uneven terrain. The fluctuations deviate from the steady, energy-minimizing pattern for level walking and have no obvious organization. But humans often look ahead when they walk, and could potentially plan anticipatory fluctuations for the terrain. Such planning is only sensible if it serves some an objective purpose, such as maintaining constant speed or reducing energy expenditure, that is also attainable within finite planning capacity. Here, we show that humans do plan and perform optimal control strategies on uneven terrain. Rather than maintaining constant speed, they make purposeful, anticipatory speed adjustments that are consistent with minimizing energy expenditure. A simple optimal control model predicts economical speed fluctuations that agree well with experiments with humans (N = 12) walking on seven different terrain profiles (correlated with model [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] all terrains). Participants made repeatable speed fluctuations starting about six to eight steps ahead of each terrain feature (up to ±7.5 cm height difference each step, up to 16 consecutive features). Nearer features matter more, because energy is dissipated with each succeeding step's collision with ground, preventing momentum from persisting indefinitely. A finite horizon of continuous look-ahead and motor working space thus suffice to practically optimize for any length of terrain. Humans reason about walking in the near future to plan complex optimal control sequences.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.